Leading with Clarity and Accountability with Thomas Cox

Are you ready to ascend the leadership ladder? Join me as I have a conversation with Thomas Cox, a tech whiz turned leadership guru, who recounts his transition from a brilliant but challenging leader to one who mastered the art of leadership. With an emphasis on the power of communication, we explore the four-part structure of accountable conversations, offering practical advice that will make you stand out from the crowd and attract more responsibility.

This episode is packed with actionable tips and strategies to enhance your communication skills and lead more effectively. So, listen up and get ready to elevate your leadership game.

Visit Thomas' website at https://bestboss.biz

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:07

Welcome to the Communication 24-7 podcast, where we communicate about how we communicate. I'm your host, Jennifer Furlong. I have a really special guest today. Thomas Cox and I started communicating some time ago and, due to my own fault, I had to postpone this conversation, and I'm so excited to be able to have him on the show today. We're going to talk about leadership development, focus on what are those communication skills that we really need to concentrate on developing in order to be successful and to move up into those leadership ranks, specifically executive leadership. I haven't had an opportunity really to have someone on the show who can talk to us about this part of our communication skills. So, Thomas, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm super excited about this conversation with you. Thank you, Jen. We could cover many hours on this, but I'll be right back Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:25

We can try to be brisk in brief. So just to get the audience caught up with you. How did you get into this space of leadership?

Speaker 2: 1:33

development Because, you know, reading your bio, you have a lot of fantastic experience. So what caused you to move here? I was originally a technologist.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I was one of those people who was technically brilliant and a total jerk.

Speaker 1: 1:52

And my thinking was, if I was technically brilliant enough, you would all have to put up with me. And that worked okay, not great. It didn't work as well as I was imagining it was working, I suspect. But what happened is I plateaued technically. I was doing database architecture, working for Oracle and IBM and Price Whitehouse Coopers and having a bunch of big projects, big clients, interesting work, and after about 15 years I'd gone so deep into it that I designed kind of every database structure there was and it was. None of it was challenging anymore. I'm like do I want to coast for the next 20, 30 years? And I'm like, no, no, I want to challenge. What am I not good at? But I really want to be good at? And for me that was people. It was leadership.

Speaker 1: 2:38

I realized I've got what's commonly referred to as a good at Asperger's syndrome. I don't think that's a they've let go of that as a formal diagnosis anymore but it's a cluster of attributes of being not very good at people skills or picking up on context and subtext. And everyone's looking at me funny. It's like it's because you're being a jerk Thomas. It's like, no, no, it can't be that. Yeah, it's exactly that dude, and I went through high school and college and I was like I'm not good at that. I went through high school and college not making very many friends and not being very empathic, but just loving my technology and loving my facts, and that will never get you into leadership or, if it does, you will not be a good leader. And I found that out in 2005 when I was forced to confront the fact that I was a borderline, toxic leader. And here. But I've been reading Harvard Business Review and I've been studying all these books. And how can I want to be good, how can I be this bad when I want to be this good? And I've been reading all the stuff Like what's going on here. And that's when I had to face that a vast amount of what passes for leadership literature is garbage. It's either completely wrong or it's too narrow.

Speaker 1: 4:03

There's a cool class that I call TBU, true, but useless, where you read the words and you're like, oh okay, I can get that. And then you're done reading and you're like so what do I do? And the answer is well, there's nothing in there to tell you that, and some of it's even from top names. They'll have. You know, I'm reading passages. Like you know, leaders drive results. I'm like, oh yeah, okay, leaders drive results. So what is? How do I do that? And what I had to do was and this again, my obsessive factor-oriented brain really served me well.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Once I set my mind to this, starting in 2005, I had to figure this out. I ran across a very few sources that were truly excellent. I'll give one credit in particular managertoolscom. Manager-toolscom If you take nothing else from me today, but you go to that website and start to listen to the free podcast or subscribe or buy the book by Mark Horseman on the effective manager, that it took me from helpless, hopeless, useless to a pretty decent manager very, very quickly, and that's been kind of the backbone of everything I've learned. I've since added a lot to that, and what I want to talk to you today has to do with accountability, because everyone will tell you that accountability is great and everyone wants other people to have more accountability, but they strangely don't seem to think that they themselves need that much more, where they kind of sort of know that they could be better, but they don't know where to really start. That was a deep dive for me.

Speaker 2: 5:45

I'll tell you.

Speaker 1: 5:46

A guy named Fernando Flores figured this out 1985, he published something with his collaborator from Stanford, terry Winograd, and it is something called the basic workflow, and it turns out that every accountable agreement and accountability comes from making accountable agreements and then fulfilling them is that that dialogue has a four-part structure, and it is the same structure for everybody. For every accountable conversation, every accountable agreement you'll ever make in your life, whether it's please pass the salt or open us a new division in Salt Lake City, it doesn't matter how big or small. The structure is identical. And as I describe it, you'll think to yourself yeah, okay, that sounds I get that, but there's some subtleties that I will elaborate for you that will differentiate you from your coworkers. You'll stand out in the eyes of your customers and your boss, and it'll attract to you much more responsibility.

Speaker 2: 6:49

When you master this, yeah, I want to jump in real quick because I really appreciate your focus on the how-to aspect of it. I think a lot of listeners that will resonate with them and that's one of the reasons why Without that we're just saying plausible things oh yeah, so we love a great leader.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Oh yeah, you should be authentic. Oh yeah yeah, we spend half an hour talking about how great authenticity is, but at the end of the day, if you don't know what to do differently, I have not helped you. Yes, and I'm committed to helping people.

Speaker 2: 7:25

It's so critical. That's my mission.

Speaker 1: 7:26

That's my passion.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Yeah, I have a great appreciation for that and I know the listeners will have an appreciation for that as well.

Speaker 2: 7:36

I do want to ask one question that, with something that you had just mentioned, you would realize that you were kind of sort of a toxic boss, and what exactly was it that pinpointed to you? This is holding me back, because there's so many people out there and you can give them the feedback, but they ain't hearing it right. And you can do all the 360s in the world, you know and everybody's giving you similar feedback, but they're just, they're not able to take it in. So what was it?

Speaker 1: 8:20

They don't know what it means because they don't know what the new behaviors have to be. So it turns out, every follower wants the exact same fundamental experience, and that fundamental experience is they want a boss who has a strong enough relationship with them that they can tell that that boss knows them as a unique human being, really listens to them, pays attention to them, doesn't confuse them with other people on the team, knows what they're good at and cares about them Not too much, but more than nothing. They're not going to mistake you for a family member, but you matter to them. And at the same time, they want a boss who champions excellence and won't let them skate, won't let them phone it in. They really was going to pull out of them their best work. And so, jen, if you and I didn't know each other very well and I said to you, jen, this is not your best work, I need you to do this again, you'd think, wow, what a manipulative line. Yeah right, you don't know what my best work is, you chump.

Speaker 1: 9:27

But if you and I have spent many weeks where, every week, I have a half hour meeting with you that's scheduled in advance, where you talk first and I listen and I'm taking notes. That's the one-on-one ManagerToolscom recommends. It's research that's shown that that is the best way to do it. Every week, 30 minutes and in that time eight, 12 weeks go by and you know that I know you well. I listen to you, I pay attention to you, I give you feedback on your performance as spot-on, and then I come to you one day and say, jen, this report not your best work.

Speaker 1: 9:59

I need your best work on this one. I need you to do it again. And you're going to go like, yeah, tom really knows me and you kind of know, you kind of did phone it in and rather than get into denial or name calling or whatever, you're going to go yeah, he's right, and you're going to do it again because I care enough about you and you care enough about me that you want to maintain the relationship. You'll go the extra mile for me and you know that I'm not going to say something in a manipulative way. If I say it's not your best work, I'm probably seeing something real.

Speaker 1: 10:33

And I've demonstrated to you that I can really spot good work from not good work.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Build that trust.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Yeah, and so strong relationship and strong requiring those are the two pieces that have to come together simultaneously to create an excellent boss experience. And I was mediocre at requiring and I was a zero at relating in 2005.

Speaker 2: 10:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:56

And I just had to start over and learn those skills.

Speaker 2: 11:00

Yeah, do you think you had mentioned empathy earlier, and how? You that was something that had not developed in you and that resonated.

Speaker 1: 11:11

I didn't have none, I didn't have a lot.

Speaker 2: 11:14

I didn't have a lot to get at. How did you build the empathy part? Because for a lot of people it does come natural, for a lot of people, but for many of us who are more like action oriented, it's a skill that you really do have to try to develop. So what did you do to develop?

Speaker 1: 11:31

that? Yeah. Well, the first thing to remember is, the more action oriented you are, the more you want empathy, because it just speeds things up. And if you're already an empathic person, great. But if you're too empathic, you'll hesitate to require appropriately, thinking that it might harm the relationship, and you'll lose sight of the fact that the best boss you've ever had is someone who did demand your top work from you. So if you let your empathy get in the way of demanding excellence, you're actually harming the relationship, believe it or not. And if you again, if you're a task oriented person and you're about oh, I'm about results, I'm a hard nosed results person it's like great, and empathy will get you there faster, better. That's the reason why you should take the time to understand how, if you don't know how humans work, you can't work with humans. Like, if you can't figure out how to drive the car, you can't get anywhere with the car. Humans run on empathy, among other things.

Speaker 1: 12:29

It gives you the relationship and the traction to ask for what you want, and you're likely to get a yes from people.

Speaker 2: 12:34

Yeah, and find that your empathy grew over time as you continued to practice the one-on-one and having those conversations.

Speaker 1: 12:44

I had to read about empathy development and where it fits in the brain, and there's some specific practices you can do to accelerate this quite dramatically. One is get into Toastmasters and become an officer in a Toastmasters club. That is the fast track to leadership skill development because it's all volunteers. No one's doing it for money. You can't force people to do anything. You've got to persuade them and there's a lot of public speaking and leading, and so Toastmasters gives you a little bit of speaking every single week and it's only through repetition that we get better and positive feedback.

Speaker 1: 13:25

The other thing that helps a ton is if you can find it or there's various sources for this improvisational theater, not comedy. Comedy is about humor and that's the humor is distancing. Improvisational theater is about getting onto a stage with one or more other people listening deeply to them in the moment. You can't have anything preconceived, you're fully present and then you respond with something that is emotionally appropriate to the emotional reality they've given you in their comments. You don't respond to the words nearly as much as you respond to the totality of what they've said and the way they've said it. And because it's just fun, it's just practice, it's not like the stakes are low and therefore you get a lot of reps, a lot of repetitions in in a low stress, low risk environment with lots of very fast feedback, and that's the way to learn something well, and improv theater did tons for my empathy development, my ability to listen for the emotional truth and other people's words and their tone of voice, so that would be an approach.

Speaker 2: 14:35

That's key. Right there, you're making me think back to when I was teaching at the college level. I taught for 18 years at the college level and I taught public speaking and human communication skills and at the time the university I taught for they made it a requirement for all computer sciences and IT majors. They had to take public speaking in order to graduate.

Speaker 1: 15:02

Good.

Speaker 2: 15:02

And I agree, I was like, yes, good, we know that there's value in this and those kids would come in. Of course they would come into the classroom, half of them seniors, because they would wait till the last minute to take this class, because they had to have it to graduate.

Speaker 1: 15:19

The whole thing that the requirement would be dropped over the course of four years.

Speaker 2: 15:23

And by the end of the semester, every single time, without fail, they would say I should have taken this class so long ago. I don't know why did I wait to take this class? What was I scared for? What was I scared of? Because they ended up, they saw how these skills were really impacting them in other areas. They ended up having fun with it, doing the impromptu stuff, things like what you were just talking about. It truly is a valuable skill to be able to develop.

Speaker 1: 15:55

You can't name me a leadership role that doesn't involve speaking to a team, to the group, to your boss, to a senior committee, to something other than yourself or one other person, If you can't get up and speak and be on stage. Oh yeah, by the way, when you're a leader, everyone's looking at you.

Speaker 2: 16:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:15

Your whole team's watching you very carefully because you're kind of the alpha dog. You're setting the emotional tone for the team. If you come in with a frown on your face, everyone starts to get worried.

Speaker 2: 16:27

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Maybe you just got a flat tire that morning, but the next thing you know there's rumors of layoffs or something. It's like no, I'm just down dudes. And so you got to be able to self-regulate, not just read others, but also read yourself and have good self-control. Yeah, I think the most useful tool for that is and this is something that I provide to my clients called positive intelligence. There's a book by that name, positive Intelligence. There's a website positiveintelligencecom and that is really a foundational set of skills for getting out of fight or flight, getting out of blame, and being constructive and being fully present with others.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 17:15

See, it's incomparable. It's revolutionized my practice.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Show your support by becoming a Com 24-7 insider. Monthly subscriptions begin for as little as $3 a month. Join today and get a shout out on an upcoming episode and receive a special gift from me. To join my insider club, click on the link in the show notes. Yeah, and I think that goes back to the accountability aspect that you had mentioned earlier just being willing to look at what it is that you're responsible for and making sure that you're holding yourself up to those standards and no excuses about it. And if you screw up, you screw up right.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Make sure it's a learning experience and have the courage to admit it and make a point to learn. Do you still want me to talk about the four-step process of creating an accountable agreement and fulfilling it? Yeah, absolutely, I would love to share that to me. So imagine covering a circle in four segments. You start at, say, 12 o'clock.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Yeah, we're going to start at a spot on a circle. You're going to go a quarter way around the circle and we're going to label that initiation. That is, you are about to ask somebody for a please do this thing for me. You want them to enter an agreement with you and you need to spend a little time getting clear on what exactly do I want? How do I want it? By when do I want it? Do I have I gathered all the data I need to give them for this?

Speaker 1: 18:53

For the first time I taught this was to guy named Eric Albertson, and he discovered that he was routinely asking his assistant for things, doing the initiation and giving him one quarter of the information needed to actually do it, but guaranteeing back and forth messages well, what about this? What about this? What about this? And when I gave him the training, he's like oh, I'm wasting a lot of our time by prematurely initiating without actually having all the stuff lined up. So you heard the phrase well begun is half done.

Speaker 1: 19:28

That's what a good initiation is is getting your head on straight. If you've ever asked for this before, if this is a routine ask, there's no excuse for you not to have your ducks in a line and have your facts laid out. Make a template, do a Google form. Just take the time to respect the person you're going to ask by getting yourself straight first, so you initiate carefully and clearly. And if there was a hiccup last time, think about that hiccup. And how do I front load a request that we not do that again? Like, oh, you gave me a PDF and I wanted a Word document. What if my initiation, I say the words I want this as a Word document place?

Speaker 2: 20:08

So you don't have to guess or remember.

Speaker 1: 20:09

That's good info, good, clear initiation. So then, okay, initiation ends when I open my mouth or send the email to actually ask Now we get into negotiation. Chris Voss's book Never Spote the Difference is a great book for the negotiation phase because he's all about win-win negotiation, where you try to say okay, and what else do I need to know? How do we make this an even better agreement together? And you never, ever, ever want to say yes prematurely. That is the death of good accountability. If someone's asking you, hey, thomas, will you, hey Jen, will you do this thing for me? Do not say the word yes until you have gathered the information you need to actually commit to that yes, if I said yes, I'll do this podcast to you and I hadn't checked my calendar and I was out of town that day or otherwise unavailable, I'd have to go back with my tail between my legs and say, oh, jen, I'm sorry, I said yes, but now I look like a chump, right, you?

Speaker 2: 21:11

started to build on my yes.

Speaker 1: 21:12

You started to schedule things. You're starting to depend on me, and here I am changing stuff. I could have checked my calendar up front, couldn't? I? Shouldn't? I Wouldn't you be happier if I had? Of course you would.

Speaker 1: 21:28

So my best advice to the people being asked if you think you need to say yes to placate somebody because it's your boss and you have to say yes to your boss, or you're a pleaser and you just want to make everybody happy by saying yes to everything, do not do that. Hold yourself back. And if you need to express your enthusiasm or your willingness to say hey. I'm so looking forward to getting all the information from you so that I can give you a committed yes. Here's my questions. And you hold back on the commitment yes.

Speaker 1: 22:05

There's three kinds of yes, as Chris Voss says in his book Never Split the Difference. There's the confirmation yes, like is it half past the hour already? Yes, yes, it is. Are we going to meet at 7 o'clock for dinner? Yeah, at 7 o'clock. That's like you're confirming facts. That's all that yes is. It doesn't actually create any kind of accountability commitment.

Speaker 1: 22:25

The second kind is the counterfeit yes. That's where you say yes but don't really mean it. Or you say it but you haven't really checked and so you can't really mean it. And you're doing it because you want to protect yourself emotionally. You do it to manipulate the other person. You're trying to create an expectation or blow it up Expectation or belief, either prematurely or contrary to the facts. And you should never accept a counterfeit yes. You should never give a counterfeit yes. And if you suspect a counterfeit yes, challenge it, including one from yourself.

Speaker 1: 23:02

So then the third kind of yes is commitment, where I tell you when I say yes to you, jen, I am taking on the burden of you expecting me to do this the way we've now agreed and I, my reputation is on the line. And if you want to advance in an organization, you make sure that you give commitment, yeses and follow through. And that means you take the time to gather the information first, as soon as you discover there's a problem, like hey, I gave you a commitment yesterday and then something happened and I discovered my wife has us booked to be out of town that day and I can't reschedule it, or my dishwasher blew up and I have to spend the day fixing it, or I got sick and I can't do the thing. But as soon as I know.

Speaker 1: 23:53

I'm telling you why Because I want you to have lead time, because I care about you, because I have integrity and I want you to know that the expectation may shift and accountability is really about managing expectations at least as much as managing the work. There's two halves to accountability there's the promise made and then there's the work done. They must match. Every time they start to drift apart, you do the work to reconnect them.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Right, right.

Speaker 1: 24:23

I have a four-hour class I teach on this. Yeah, I know how to manage all these pieces, okay. So finally, you get through your negotiation. You give your committed yes. You pulled out of the other person all the facts, the context you want to report. How are you going to use this report? Who's going to read the report? What format do you want the report in? What kind of detail do you need? How quickly Are you going to want to reuse this? Would you be happier with a spreadsheet? Should I also include a graph? Should the graph be colorblind accessible? You might ask Okay, that's a little deep but you get the idea.

Speaker 1: 25:00

The more intelligent questions you ask before that final yes, the more your value rises in the other person's eyes. Because you've got your ducks in a row as the work provider, you're asking tough questions. Okay, what difference does this really make? How good is good enough? How much detail do you need? I don't want to overwork this and charge you extra for something you don't need. I don't want to under deliver. Are other people contributing information that I should be coordinating with so that all of our work can fold together? I haven't thought of that. Yeah, I am. Okay. Great, give me their names and I'll coordinate with them. Wouldn't that be nice? All right, part one was initiate. Part two was negotiate. Now it's time to perform.

Speaker 1: 25:49

Everyone assumes accountability is all about performance. It's only a quarter about good performance, but it's a big quarter when you're performing. You have already made the agreement. If you have to tweak the agreement, you do it proactively and very explicitly. You may turn around to become an asker yourself and ask subcontractors to help you out. Hey, I promised Jen this thing. I need to get some stuff done. Hey, fred, hey, barney, come help me.

Speaker 1: 26:17

What happens if Fred or Barney let me down? Do I go to Jen and say Jen, it's not my fault, fred, let me down. No, top performers never blame anyone. They own their inputs. That's the phrase you want to use. Look this up. Owning the inputs means if I turn around to help Jen and I ask Fred or Barney for help, I ask them with enough lead time that if they don't perform I can replace their work with someone else's or I can recover. If I can't recover, I say to Jen Jen, I'm sorry, I failed to properly manage my subcontractors. I've let you down. Here's my repromise. I can help. It'll be late and I'm very sorry. How can I help reduce the impact on you? That's me owning it. How do you feel when I talk like that?

Speaker 2: 27:09

I was going to say if you could just for one second really think about and hear what Tom just said right there. I failed in having my subcontractors, or I failed to communicate effectively or being able to take ownership. That makes me feel okay, I can still have trust in that.

Speaker 1: 27:34

I'm still driving this ship.

Speaker 2: 27:36

You're still driving it. You're taking responsibility for it.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Whereas if I try to shed responsibility, say, jen, it's not my fault, these other things happened beyond my control. Now you're thinking well, clearly, thomas isn't running this show. Can I talk to whoever is in charge, please, because it clearly isn't Tom. You don't want to be the one not in charge.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Yeah, yeah, that's not a good leadership trait Not a good look.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Not a good look Since you don't want to have to say, hey, I screwed up. There's your incentive to plan it well, be proactive, create really early deadlines for your subloops and your subcontractors so that you have time to integrate, you have time to recover from service failures and so on. Okay, you've done your performance. If you have to go back and say, hey, I promised you Oak, we're out of Oak. I just found out Oak is going to be another six weeks. Do you want to wait the six weeks, or should I use older or Ash? I've got those in stock. I've double checked. I've actually reserved some, just in case you say yes. Okay, now we might talk about the pros and cons of waiting versus going with a different wood, but at least you've got a choice and at least I've told you as early as I possibly could.

Speaker 2: 28:51

That's right.

Speaker 1: 28:52

It's a trust holder.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:54

Okay, yay, performance is done. Are we done yet? No, we're three quarters of the way. Now we have to have the final phase, called acceptance, where performance isn't done until I both do the work and number two, tell you I have done the work. Okay, how do I tell you I've done the work? Well, we should have negotiated that. We should have agreed during negotiation. So, jen, when I'm done with this, how do you want me to inform you that I'm done and how would you like this delivered? Should I drop it on your front porch? Should I leave it at the on-call window? Do you want me to forward it on to Betty? We should know in advance. Good negotiation, good initiation will have that all straightened out and you'll know that I know what to do. At the end of performance, I'll say, jen, performance is done. Here's my report, that performance is done. I'm notifying you in the way you asked, which is a text message and email, a couriered letter, whatever. Okay, but we're still not done because during initiation negotiation we agreed that once I deliver, you will look at it and you'll tell me if it's okay or not.

Speaker 1: 30:10

The acceptance period you say, yep, this looks fine, as is thanks. So much or no, actually my needs have changed or it's not what I. What's the old saying in IET? It's exactly what I asked for, but it's not what I want. Who knows what the answer is going to be that part of us building a stronger and stronger and stronger relationship isn't just me delivering, it's us having a high bandwidth, high, trusting conversation after delivery about okay, did this work for you? How could I have done even better? What should we do even better next time? How do you initiate better? How do I perform better next time? We do this particular dance and if you're disappointed during acceptance I did my best and you're not happy I'm going to learn lessons from that. I'm going to take ownership from my role in it and I'm going to give you hopefully I'll tell you literally exactly what I'm going to do differently next time, if you give me another chance and repeated improvements is an upward spiral of quality and an upward spiral of mutual trust. I tell you there's people I would hire again who completely screwed the pooch, but they handled the failure so gracefully and so well. This literally happened.

Speaker 1: 31:36

We had a mold treatment in the house we were selling. We were three days from close. They go in, put a little bleach solution on. Then they're going to air out the crawl space, the attic space. We come in the next day the entire house reeks of bleach. It's uninhabitable. And now we're not going to close on the sale but we already bought the new place.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Everything's in disarray and it's like Saturday, of course, right, okay, and there's like no hotline number to call. There's no emergency red phone, nothing. And we're furious and live it and I'm like calling Paul Davis, disaster Recovery Specialist, to come in and remediate this mess and that's going to be, oh, probably $6,000. The owners get back in touch and say shows up physically, meets us on site with every blower and fan I've ever seen in my life, and the entire staff and his wife are there and they're like we're going to make this right. And within a day you couldn't smell a thing. It was all better. And they apologized and explained that they were going to change their weekend protocol so that no one would ever have a phone number to call if there was a problem. They handled it so well, so beautifully. I gave them a five-star Google review and I would use them again in a heartbeat.

Speaker 2: 33:07

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Speaker 1: 34:28

You are better off saying no, I can't do it.

Speaker 2: 34:31

Exactly Bam.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Yeah, saying yes, and it turns out not to be the case.

Speaker 2: 34:37

Yeah, it's so hard. So many people have a hard time saying no.

Speaker 1: 34:42

They're afraid to say no, yes, yes, but I think that's a really good approach.

Speaker 2: 34:47

Yeah, it kind of gives them permission in this way to really think things through Realistically. I mean, at this moment in time I'm not going to be able to pull this off. Or I would be able to pull this off if I had three weeks instead of two weeks, and that would go into that negotiation part that you were discussing just a moment ago.

Speaker 1: 35:10

So I'm attempting to do a share here. I'm hoping it's visible. This is our friend. The accountability loop, you'll see, the asker on the left starts with an initiate as you go up out of the asker on the left side. Initiation ends with that request for performance. That's the object, the artifact, the email, what have you? And then the negotiate phase occurs from the top down towards the right ending with a mutual agreement of performance.

Speaker 1: 35:38

What are we each going to do? I will do the work, jen. You will promise to respond to my emails promptly when I ask for questions or have problems or need a decision, and we agree on how I will deliver. Then there's the perform phase, which only ends when I report that I'm done. I can't do the work and go home for the day. I have to do the work and tell you it's done, otherwise you don't know it's done, you can't do your next piece. And then we've also agreed that you're going to go through an acceptance period and let me know hey, was this any good? Did it meet your needs? How can I do even better next time?

Speaker 2: 36:13

Yeah, and I like this because, regardless of what side you're on, whether you're the asker or you're the doer, you really are taking responsibility. You're taking ownership for your part. So if it breaks up, so if it breaks down at some point, you really do need to pay attention to that and ask yourself did I ask the right questions or did I make myself clear and really focus on what I could have done better in order? To make that correction for the next time. I love that, that's one thing that.

Speaker 2: 36:48

I'm, you know, as a communicator, I'm all about take responsibility for how you are expressing yourself, whatever it is, yes, so let me say one last thing.

Speaker 1: 37:01

So during perform, it's very common to run into hiccups, roadblocks, issues of various kinds, and I actually formulated the accountability loop and found Fernando Flores's original research while I was trying to help a client, helped them actually quite dramatically. They were a digital agency and they had a problem that they would start working on something and their clients would just go dark on them, wouldn't reply to emails, wouldn't make decisions they would have to make decisions on logos and it would drag the project out. It would add all kinds of additional costs to things, and they hadn't actually talked about cost overruns in advance, so they didn't feel they could charge for it, and so they ended up eating a lot of overrids and they weren't making money Plus. They were frustrated and I said, look, you're going to do two things. First, we're going to come up with a standard email. I call it the Warm ABCs Because it's an email that's going to sound cold unless you make an effort to be warm. Therefore, make it warm. Dear Fred, we really love working with you.

Speaker 1: 38:06

I've got a very important question for you. And then A is asked for exactly what you actually need. Is it a decision? Is it an authorization? Is it? What am I asking for here? Put it up front. You may have to write the email until you're clear on what it is you're asking for. Okay, go back and insert at the top of the email what am I asking you for? It's literally this email requests your choice of one of these three logos. That's the thing I actually need. That's the A and ABC. B is by when. I need this decision, no later. If you say tomorrow, say tomorrow, comma, and then Thursday, the 20th of July. Because if you say tomorrow and I don't read it until tomorrow, am I thinking tomorrow from when I read it?

Speaker 2: 39:00

Is that a?

Speaker 1: 39:01

vague language. Now I got to go look up. When did you send it? Don't make people think, especially clients. Don't make people think If you're the one writing the email, you do the extra work so they don't have to. So if I ever say tomorrow, I always try to say tomorrow, parentheses. Thu for Thursday online dash JUL, or 20 dash J, which works the 20th of July. I never use two numbers. I don't do three slash two or two slash three, because that's either February 3rd or March 2nd, depending on if you're European Central America.

Speaker 2: 39:36

That's right yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:38

It's like no ambiguity. Ambiguity is evil. Yeah, it's just no. So I standardize, actually train. Anybody works with me.

Speaker 1: 39:47

You always put a two-digit number for the day hyphen and a three-letter abbreviation for the month. There's never any ambiguity with that. If there's a time component, I specify the time zone. That's a fully qualified date. So I need this decision from you later than noon tomorrow. Comma, thursday, the 20th of July, and noon would be Pacific time. That's the B. By when? Okay. What's the C? The C is the context and the consequence.

Speaker 1: 40:24

What if you don't reply? Very important, okay, because they might not. Or why does this decision all that important? They're not going to remember. When I first broach this, they were like but it's obvious why it's important. I said no, it's obvious to you because you're working full-time on the project. The clients do a nine other things, none of them this, and they're probably looking at this email at the gated LaGuardia between flights. Don't make them try to search out the context to remember why this is important. Just put it in there as a sentence this decision will unlock the next phase of the project and any delay will cause a delay to the entire project, or whatever is true and there's a little ass.

Speaker 1: 41:11

After ABCs, the S stands for silence. What if they go dark? If I do not hear from you, I will put the project on hold until I do. Or if I do not hear from you, I will contact your spouse and ask him or her. If I do not hear from you, I will something.

Speaker 1: 41:32

And when I get taught people that they would say who sounds threatening, I'm like, look, if they are silent, something will happen. All you're doing is demystifying what will happen, because things will happen whether you say it or not. It's kinder to be clearer and tell them if I don't hear from you, then I'd stop and say what are you going to do? If you don't hear from them, I'm just going to put the project on hold. Okay, tell them that. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Again, I would get pushed back and I finally said okay, you need to change your onboarding, the initiation negotiation phase. You need to say look, before we start working together, you need to know during perform, we use a template to communicate with our clients. Here's an example. It's going to look and sound like this we don't say it to be mean, we're not trying to threaten you. This is how we clearly communicate status and needs for updates with clients. Are you going to be okay with this? Most people say, oh, my God, this is great, you actually thought this out. Yeah, we thought this out, we're perfect. If anybody says you can't talk to me like that, okay. Well, how would you like me to talk to you when I need a decision in its critical path?

Speaker 2: 42:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:54

Give me the wording you'd like and I'll put it up and put a note in your file and that's how I'll talk to you. Sahid, yes, yeah, whatever you like but don't leave this stuff to chance, right, top performers. Do not leave performance to chance. Don't think that you can just do the work and survive or thrive. You have to do the work and manage expectations around the work both. That is the definition of accountability is both of those things together.

Speaker 2: 43:24

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 43:25

Yeah, not just one and not just the other.

Speaker 2: 43:28

Do you know how much this makes my heart sing to have a guest on my show who, pretty much, is just confirming everything that I preach about with the clarity and the specificity, the directness. And direct communication does not equate to being mean. Right, it does not mean to, and if you feel mean, to you reverse.

Speaker 1: 43:55

Okay, first off soften your tone and second reverse positions.

Speaker 2: 43:59

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:01

Put yourself in the other person's shoes or even front load it and say, hey, we love our clients and we believe, as Brunet Brown says, that clear is kind.

Speaker 2: 44:09

That's right.

Speaker 1: 44:11

There is a greater than zero possibility we will hit a snag. If and when we hit a snag, we will communicate to you like this here's a sample, here's a template. Here's an example of how we do this. We'll look like this we will need you to turn around If you can't reply. You need to tell us who is your backup person so we can get fast answers. If no one answers within 24 hours, it says you're in the contract we can put your project on hold. We don't want to do that, but we can't just pay people to sit idly because that would bankrupt you. Yeah, yeah. And, by the way, here's our policy on overcharges and overages and whatever. And if anything was about to occur that might cause an upcharge or a penalty, we will tell you in an email like this, and it'll sound like this and here's an example. And again, these are not attempts to make you feel bad. This is our way of being super transparent on what to expect. We're professionals, you're a professional, and professionals talk about money and timelines and commitments.

Speaker 2: 45:13

Yeah, and I want to make sure that what I am doing for you, what I am delivering to you, is 100% what you're expecting, 100% what you want. I want you to be happy. I want you to be satisfied with this.

Speaker 1: 45:26

Bingo.

Speaker 2: 45:27

Yeah, yeah, it's so critical to be able to understand that, and in your right email. Yeah, it can be very cold, but I tell you what? What a great opportunity. The email gives us a great opportunity to really think about very carefully how do I craft this message in a way that it can be clear and also show some compassion at the same time. So absolutely.

Speaker 1: 45:52

And if you're not sure how to do it, take the time up front to draft three or four versions of templates or consult some friends, or notice when you get an email that you think, oh, I love this email, this is so nice. Oh, file it away. You put it in a swipe file, hang on to that stuff.

Speaker 2: 46:08

That's right. Yeah, well, I got to tell you this has been such a fantastic episode. I know that the listeners are going to walk away with so much that they can use coming up with and really more than leadership. You know, this is something just every day if you want to be able to perform effectively in the workplace, and I can even see how we could apply a lot of this to our personal relationship.

Speaker 1: 46:41

Anywhere, you're managing expectations, which is, oh yeah, most of our lives.

Speaker 2: 46:45

Oh yeah, Do you manage expectations with your?

Speaker 1: 46:47

spouse, with your kids, with your parents, with your neighbors? Yeah, you do.

Speaker 2: 46:51

Fantastic Fantastic.

Speaker 1: 46:54

One last thought I'll leave you with is there's one thing, because, if you're looking to be promoted, managing your people's expectations of you and how you follow through on commitments is a huge way to differentiate yourself, and there is one thing that no one minds it if you steal it, and that is responsibility. Run towards problems. Run towards problems and do it equipped with tools like this to be highly, highly accountable and highly clear and kind.

Speaker 2: 47:24

Yes.

Speaker 1: 47:25

And when you show up as an empathic problem solver and you communicate with exquisite clarity and show exquisite attention to detail and you manage your expectations just as avidly as you manage the rest of the work, you will be a standout person and people will want to give you more work and want to give you more responsibility. Heck, I would.

Speaker 2: 47:50

Yeah, yeah, and all of us want that right. It just makes it so much better for us.

Speaker 1: 47:56

That's who we want to delegate to is the people who take ownership and make stuff happen.

Speaker 2: 48:00

That's right.

Speaker 1: 48:01

Don't blindside us.

Speaker 2: 48:02

Yeah, yeah, that is wonderful. So how do we get in touch?

Speaker 1: 48:07

with you. Please go to bestbossbiz If you have me on again. Another time I'll explain the significance of best boss. It's the touchstone and the heart of what I call the only universal truth of leadership.

Speaker 2: 48:18

Yes. I would love to have you on the show again If you're willing to come back on the show. There's just so much we could talk about Absolutely. But yeah, that'll be next time, we'll dive into that. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being a guest. This has been so incredibly informative and I know that we have learned a lot here, so thanks again for taking the time to sharing this with us.

Speaker 1: 48:47

Very much my pleasure, Jen. Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2: 48:49

All right, everybody. Y'all take care, have a great rest of your day evening, wherever you are in the world, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review.